[Antennas] Effective ways to use lots of land, trees and wire?

Fri Jan 16 18:19:25 EST 2009

>> I've got 12 acres, mostly wooded, lots of wire, and not a whole lot of
>> money... I've got an 80m OCF about 50' in the trees now, which works
>> reasonably well, but there ought to be a way to get more performance
>> 73s, AJ4LL

I have 20 acres, with many medium sized trees. When I first bought
the property in 1997, I searched for a problem that this QTH was
the solution for. I looked into rhombics, vee beams, huge wire loops,
etc. What I concluded was:
1. The land allows you to put up beverages. Great for receiving.
It also allows giant radial fields for low band arrays.
2. The trees, if medium size, are good for cloud warmers, and that's
about it. If really tall, well over 100 ft, they might be good for
high dipoles. Conceivably, if you have a lot of trees, (I don't)
you could use them for a low band vertical array. Run ropes between
trees and attach vertical wires to the ropes.
I found I could get irrigation tubing cheaply and make verticals
that way. The trees were more trouble than they were worth.
Rhombics and vee beams, fugettaboutit.
Rick N6RK